Appendix IV - Measuring Organizational Power

Summary

STATE COERCIVE CAPACITY

Scope

High: Large, well-trained, and well-equipped internal security apparatus with an effective presence across the national territory. Existence of specialized intelligence or internal security agencies with demonstrated capacity to penetrate civil society and monitor and repress opposition activities at the village and/or neighborhood level across the country.

Medium: Criteria for high scope are not met, but security forces maintain a minimally effective presence across virtually the entire national territory. No evidence of severe deficits of funding, equipment, and training.

Low: Unusually small/underdeveloped security apparatus. Evidence of a lack of minimally effective state presence in significant parts of the national territory or severe deficits of funding, equipment, and training.

Cohesion

High: Evidence of non-material sources of cohesion. This may include:

Recent history of military conflict (leading security officials must be drawn from the generation that participated in the conflict), including:

1. Large-scale external war (without defeat); or

2. Intense and enduring military competition or threat; or

3. Successful revolutionary or anticolonial struggle

or

Pervasive ethnic ties between incumbent party and security forces, in a society that is deeply divided along those ethnic lines

or

Shared ideology in a context in which this ideological cleavage is dominant

or

Evidence of consistent ability to use high-intensity coercion in recent past (pre-1990).

Medium: No evidence of non-material sources of cohesion

and

No evidence of previous insubordination (pre-1990), recent defeat in military conflict, or significant wage arrears to security officials

Low: No evidence of non-material sources of cohesion

and

Evidence from the decade prior to the period under analysis of significant insubordination by state security officials, including attempted coups, open rebellion, large-scale desertion, and refusal to carry out major executive orders